Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer from BC. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD at Simon Fraser University where his research concentrates on intergenerational trauma and Indigenous literature. Abel’s creative work has recently been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry (Tightrope), The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation (Arbiter Ring), and The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (Hayword). Abel is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize).
As Sam McKegney writes in Magic Weapons, “the residential school haunts Native literature in Canada.” In this paper, Jordan Abel asks what it means to be Indigenous, what it means to be an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, and what it looks like to be at the intersection of Creative Writing, Digital Humanities, and Indigenous Studies.
Trey Adcock is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and the Director of American Indian and Indigenous Studies at UNC Asheville. He was recently selected as a 2018-2019 Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellow for his community based project, Tuti Tsunadelogwasdi Uninohelv (Stories of the Snowbird Day School), which is a collaborative effort to collect oral histories, mainly in the Cherokee language, and digitize historical artifacts related to a Bureau of Indian Affairs school in the Snowbird Cherokee community. Prior to UNC Asheville, he received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a Sequoyah Doctoral Fellow for his research on technology integration at a tribally controlled school. His scholarship interests include American Indian education, digital humanities, Indigenous methodologies and cultural studies. He lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina with his wife, two children and various farm animals.
The Snowbird Day School evolved from Quaker led initiatives in the late 19th century to educate young Cherokee Indians living in Tuti yi, a Native community in Western North Carolina. By the early 20th century, the school was administered by the federal government via the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and as with most federally-run schools for Native students, it sought to assimilate Indian youth into white, Anglophone culture. Over the course of nearly seven decades, an estimated 550 students attended the school before it was closed in 1963 due to federal desegregation efforts. Today, approximately 80 former students are still living, including the last surviving teacher, 93-year-old Louise Lee. In partnership with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), Trey Adcock, will use the Fellowship to collect and preserve oral histories, mainly in the Cherokee language, and digitize historical artifacts that tell the story of the Snowbird Day School. Adcock will collaborate with tribal members to design a multi-media digital gallery and a photography exhibit that will travel throughout Western North Carolina before joining the permanent collection of the Junaluska Museum, located in the Tuti yi community. Adcock, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, helped author a resolution in support of the project that was passed unanimously by the EBCI tribal council. As a collaborative, tribal-led initiative, Tuti Tsunadelogwasdi Uninohelv (Stories of the Snowbird Day School) will bring Cherokee communities together to reflect on their history, document the experience of cultural transition, and contribute to the preservation of their language.
Jeffery Ansloos is an Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE/UT. His current research is focused on local and digital ecologies of Indigenous youth health and political mobilization, specifically at the intersections of criminal justice reform, suicide prevention, and Indigenous rights. Through community-based partnerships with new media organizations, Ansloos is developing innovative approaches to youth leadership and capacity building for social impact.
Dr. Ansloos will present his research on Indigenous youth political organizing and digital activism, specifically discussing the shifting ecological perspectives on Indigenous youth engagement in social media. Further, Dr. Ansloos will present research on the emerging utilization of social media analytics for the purpose of explicating social and political dimensions of Indigenous mental health. This will include a demonstration of emerging methodologies for text and audiovisual social media analysis, and how these practices thread together
methodological traditions of digital humanities and social science research. In particular, Dr. Ansloos will show how both qualitative and network analysis of social movements such as #IdleNoMore can inform innovations in theories, practices and social policy. Finally, Dr. Ansloos will also examine some of the opportunities and challenges in applying Indigenous research frameworks and ethics within social media research.
Michelle Lee Brown is a Ph.D. candidate studying Indigenous political praxis and futures through Indigenous designersʻ video games, graphic novels, and machinima. She has published peer-reviewed work on the Never Alone video game, a methods chapter on Indigenous political theory approaches to videogame research, and “Liminal” – a comic in the forthcoming Relational Constellation collection from MSU Press and Native Realities Press. She is currently working on an article on water and Indigenous digital resurgence and a comic based on multiple levels of impostor syndrome.
Euskaldun, Michelle currently resides on, and is nourished by, the land and waters of the Kānaka Maoli in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.
This presentation is the foundation of a research project in Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Lapurdi region and then design and programming sessions in Hawaiʻi and at AbTeC lab at Concordia University. The goal is to take a decidedly ʻWesternʻ construct – VR – and show that by encoding it with Indigenous relational protocols, it opens up to Indigenous temporalities, meaning-making, and (re)coded kinnections – relational practices that transcend the exclusively human or mammalian. At this symposium, I will share some of the (re)coding processes and interactions between readers and tangible and intangible entities that pushes porous boundaries of place, space, and linear temporalities. The subject of the particular piece will be water, specifically itsas – sea water. Itsas helps to parse through Indigeneity as relational responsibilities in tension with complicity in ongoing settler colonialism in multiple realms. The tentative end goal is to offer a template that allows other communities to infuse it with their own art and stories, then create boundaries and switches between what information is accessed when and where in ways that make honor their worldviews and relational praxis.
Treena Chambers is an International Studies student at SFU, and brings her experience as a mature student and her Métis background into her studies of nationhood and identity. Treena’s past experience as a co-curator and organizer of the Robson Reading Series and work in the bookselling industry helps to inform her varied contributions to her work on The People and the Text project at SFU. Treena has also worked on the categorization/digitization of archival materials in preparation for digitization.
Within the digital humanities, it is important to consider how we use, store, and categorize supporting materials. My contribution to the Cogewea project was to work with archival materials. The materials surrounding the creation of a work can inform our understanding of the text. In processing the materials we need to consider what we digitize and where we store them, and how we make these materials available to future scholars, while respecting the wishes of the family.
Sarah Dupont, Métis, is from Prince George, B.C. She is a proud graduate of the University of Northern B.C. where she did her undergraduate studies. Sarah received a Masters of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She was formerly the Community Engagement Librarian (Aboriginal Services) with Edmonton Public Library. Sarah’s role is shared between the Xwi7xwa Library, where her work includes providing reference and instruction services, programming, and outreach with the campus’s Indigenous community, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, where her Aboriginal Engagement role extends more broadly off campus. At the IKBLC, her work includes projects such as the Indigitization program and the annual Aboriginal (Un)History Month exhibition. Sarah is the convenor of the First Nations Interest Group of the BC Library Association.
David Gaertner has conducted and taught Indigenous new media and digital storytelling with the First Nations and Indigenous Studies (FNIS) at the University of British Columbia since 2013, when he designed the first Digital Humanities course in Canada developed specifically for Indigenous and allied students. Gaertner also teaches Indigenous Politics, Indigenous Representation, and Indigenous Foundations in the Program, and his Digital Humanities curricula is deeply rooted in the mandates and objectives of the FNIS.
As a notional environment, cyberspace is still largely considered a space without place, which, for many, calls into question its applicability in Indigenous worldviews. Given the centrality of land in Indigenous epistemologies and the ongoing threats to traditional territory by colonial governments, precisely what a “landless territory” might mean for Indigenous writers is an evocative and pressing issue, particularly as more and more Indigenous authors take to the Internet to create and share stories. This talk offers a critical, yet affirming theorization of Indigenous cyberspace that emphasizes the work created by Indigenous storytellers and programmers. It argues for a more complex, nuanced understanding of cyberspace and illustrates the ways in which Indigenous authors are connecting it to land, place, and bodies.
Melissa Haberl is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia where she completed her BA in History and First Nations and Indigenous Studies. A settler of German and Austrian descent raised on the Mi’kmaq territory of Epekwitk, currently known as Prince Edward Island, her academic and political interests include histories of Canadian settler colonialism, settler national imagining and mythologies, Indigenous traditions of resistance, radical feminisms, and women’s anti-violence organizing. Melissa is a member of CiTR’s Indigenous Radio Collective as well as the student research assistant for Knowing the Land Beneath Our Feet, a collaborative digital mapping project between the Musqueam Nation and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC. She is particularly interested in the potentials of engaging fellow settlers in education and dialogue around colonial realities, Indigenous rights and experiences, and settler responsibilities to place and community through the channels of new media, with a specific eye toward interactive digital mapping and audio storytelling and podcasting.
Sara Humphreys is a settler Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. Broadly, she engages in activist and critical pedagogy and research. She is also working on collaboratively re-editing Cogewea, a novel by Okanagan author Mourning Dove, via Indigenous editing practices and protocols (and with a great deal of guidance by Indigenous scholars). There will not only be a new print edition but an academic edition that incorporates digital gaming protocols. This project is under contract with Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Sara is also an Open Knowledge Practicum Fellow with the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory.
Is it possible to produce an academic edition that respects and even facilitates the holistic relationship to community and land vital to Indigenous stories? This question informs our project to produce new editions of Mourning Dove’s 1927 western Cogewea. This project experiments with the ways in which digital gaming paradigms can produce academic editions that serve Indigenous storytelling as opposed to forcing such texts to conform to western academic editing, publishing, and even teaching practices. Working with Indigenous editing practice and protocols, a print and digital gaming edition of Cogewea will be created that respects Mourning Dove’s Syilx/Okanagan knowledge.
Maize Longboat is Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River in southeastern Ontario. He is an MA candidate with the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University where will complete a Research-Creation project on the topic of Indigenous videogame development. Maize is also a Research Assistant with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF) and is part of the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) research network where he is thrilled to be able to combine his work and studies through academic research and creative practice.
This presentation features Maize’s experience in developing an Indigenous videogame as part of his MA research. He has recently defended his formal proposal for his research-creation project, as well as begun preliminary research and game-making work. Maize will also speak about his duties as a Research Assistant with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures that have allowed him to explore a wealth of Indigenous engagements with new media. He has done work with Mohawk artist and Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) co-founder Skawennati in machinima production, facilitated several Skins machinima workshops across Canada with Indigenous youth, and manages the Activating AbTeC Islandinitiative held weekly in Indigenous-determined cyberspace.
Gerry Lawson is a member of the Heiltsuk First Nation and is the Coordinator for the Oral History and Language Lab, at the Museum of Anthropology, at the University of British Columbia. The OHLL supports media creation and digitization for the purpose of oral history, language and material culture research. Gerry’s previous work as a media digitization and technology consultant has enabled him to work with a wide variety of legacy media formats. He stresses a practical approach recording, digitization and digital media management, which he has tried to bring to his work at the Museum of Anthropology.
Ashley Caranto Morford (she/her) is a Pangasinan, Visayan (Cebuana), and British PhD student in English and Book History at the University of Toronto, where she is an uninvited occupant on the Dish with One Spoon Territory. Her work intersects Indigenous studies, anti- and decolonialism, sexuality studies, and digital humanities.
Like many of my relations, I have tattoos. The process of getting tattooed and of celebrating tattoos is one way that I, as a member of the Visayan and Luzonese diaspora, connect with my ancestors and my Filipino homelands. Tattoos and tattooing practices are an ancient and significant part of our traditional knowledge. When Spanish colonizers came to the Visayas in the 1500s, they named the Indigenous inhabitants of the territories “Pintados” (“Painted Ones”) due to the intricate and plentiful tattoos that the Visayans had. Colonization stifled the rich Indigenous tattooing practices of the Philippines; indeed, colonization attempted to shame, Other, and dehumanize Filipinos for these practices. Yet these practices continue today in grassroots spaces.
Indigenous Filipino studies is emerging as a powerful space to discuss decolonialism, homelands, sovereignty, and survivance, with, for instance, the 2017 Sea Junction conference that brought people from all over the world together to discuss Indigenous studies in the Philippine context, as well as the UBC Philippine Studies series hosting a 2018 “Thinking Through Indigenous Queerness in the Philippines” seminar. Further, Indigenous scholars and scholars of colour are increasingly bringing decolonial and Indigenous studies lenses to the field of digital humanities, which has traditionally been predominantly Western-centric in focus.
This presentation develops out of and contributes to these movements and discussions. I argue that Indigenous Filipino tattooing practices embody a form of decolonial digital technology that connects us to/with homeland, sovereignty, indigeneity, and survivance.
Michelle Lorna Nahanee is a Coast Salish matriarch from the Squamish Nation. Her traditional name is Snenkwem Aliya, which means sunshine woman –reflecting her creativity and how she uses her skill to bring light into dark subjects. She is a creative director, critical communications scholar and Indigenous change maker. With over 20 years of experience in digital media, Michelle has co-created and witnessed the strengthening of Indigenous visual sovereignty including early Indigenous new media when she joined CyberPowWow, the first online, interactive, Indigenous art gallery.
In January 2018, Michelle completed a Master of Arts in Communication from Simon Fraser University where she wrote “Decolonizing Identity: Indian Girl to Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Matriarch.” She concluded her research with a call to dismantle academic barriers to decolonizing practices. She begins her PhD with the SFU School of Communication.
Michelle Lorna Nahanee, Squamish, will present her research-creation media project PLAYING POSTCOLONIAL –a decolonizing activity book for the woke and the weary which applies Squamish matriarchal approaches and epistemologies to the gamification of decolonization. The featured activity will be her Sínulhkay and Ladders board game, which redesigns a classic game into a rhetorical tool for deconstructing normalized enactments of supremacy while simultaneously promoting chénchenstway—the Squamish verb meaning to uphold one another. Sínulhkay, a double-headed sea serpent, represents the power of transformation in the game. It embodies the ability to create or destroy with the rationale of two minds and two faces.“Supremacy, commodification, insecurity, fear, and identity constructions are strong drivers and food for Sínulhkay. Chénchenstway will strengthen all of us.”
Deanna Reder is Associate Professor in the Departments of First Nations Studies and English at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches courses in Indigenous popular fiction, Indigenous perspectives on gender and sexuality, and Canadian Indigenous literatures, especially autobiography. She is Principal Investigator, in partnership with co-applicants Dr. Margery Fee and Cherokee scholar Dr. Daniel Heath Justice of the University of British Columbia, on a five-year (SSHRC) funded project for 2015-2020 called “The People and the Text: Indigenous Writing in Northern North America up to 1992,” which makes heavy use of digital technologies for the analysis of Indigenous texts and the dissemination of research.
The People and the Text connects Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and students through the creation of an online annotated-bibliography of Indigenous texts from the beginning of Indigenous literacy in English or in English translation to 1992. In this presentation, Reder will discuss the creation of the project’s open-access, annotated bibliography of Indigenous texts and the use of the Drupal CMS to develop their website.
Daisy Rosenblum (PhD University of California, Santa Barbara) is a linguist of European descent (Catalan, German, and Russian-Jewish) focused on the multi-modal documentation and description of indigenous languages of North America, with an emphasis on methods, partnerships, and products grounded in community goals and contributing to community-based language reclamation. Her current research focuses on the documentation and mobilization of place-based Indigenous knowledges in the languages of Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw (Kwak̓wala) and Gitga’at (Sm’algyax) territories. As an instructor, she focuses on learning and practicing decolonizing pedagogies and analyses of Indigenous languages within and beyond the academy. Before becoming a linguist, Daisy taught art and designed curriculum in public elementary schools, museums and libraries in Brooklyn and Queens, was coordinator of Immigrant Artist Services at New York Foundation for the Arts, and worked as a shadow puppeteer.
Cultural and linguistic continuity is inextricably territorial: tied to seasonal practices and linked to persistence of relationship between people and place. This presentation describes a group of intertwined projects which seek to reclaim, for community purposes, place-based knowledge of the ancestral homelands from which the ‘Nakwaxda’xw and Gwa’sala were removed in 1964. We will share a community-generated pilot project centered around clam harvesting, traditional use mapping, language documentation and documentary filmmaking. The multiple modes of inquiry, knowledge-creation, and delivery involved in the project have methodological implications for ethical protocol, data management and attention to community-situated priorities around access to knowledge. We will address the related benefits and challenges of multi-dimensional collaboration among multiple stakeholders within and beyond the community, including the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Elders’ Council; the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Elementary School; the Eke-Me Xi High School; the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Band Office; the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Treaty Office; Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Lands and Resources; and the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program at UBC.
Caroline Running Wolf, née Old Coyote, is the child of an Apsaalooke Vietnam veteran who fell in love with a German world traveler. As the daughter of nomadic parents she grew up between USA, Canada, and Germany. Thanks to her genuine interest in people and their stories she taught herself eleven languages and traveled extensively. Together with her husband Michael she creates virtual and augmented reality experiences to advocate for Native American voices, languages and cultures.
Michael Running Wolf was raised in a rural village in Montana with intermittent water and electricity; naturally he now has a Masters of Science in Computer Science. Though he is a published poet, in Allison Hedge Coke’s anthology Sing, he is a computer nerd at heart. His lifelong goal is to pursue endangered indigenous language revitalization using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technology. He was raised with a grandmother who only spoke his tribal language, Cheyenne, which like many other indigenous languages is near extinction. By leveraging his advanced degree and technical skills Michael hopes to strengthen the ecology of thought represented by indigenous languages through immersive technology.
Study of a Commodity VR is an interactive virtual reality (VR) experience expanding on Louis Still Smoking’s painting and its message. The experience offers a glimpse into the Pikuni (Blackfeet) culture and traditions. The experience is set in 4 scenes:
- Onboarding: teaches the VR user controller functionalities
- Present Reality: VR user emerges in an urban alley. They participate in a conversation with the artist, Louis Still Smoking, about Western society appropriating and commodifying Native American culture and traditions, misusing sacred tobacco for consumerism and addiction while pairing these consumer products with misogynistic and racist depictions of Native Americans.
- Past Reality: ‘Tiles’ float in, obstructing the line of vision and drowning out the dialog. The user can interact with these tiles. Some release traditional knowledge stories while others contain examples of advertisements.
- Ceremonial Reality: As the urban alley dissolves, the view opens up to the Ceremonial Reality. For a short, blissful moment, the VR user floats out into the Pikuni homelands. Pikuni songs and stories caress the golden prairie grass, tying the tobacco in to the land, plants, animals, and people in a sacred unity. The undulating songs and stories carry the VR user on their swell towards the sun. The experience fades to white.
Project Purpose
This project, Study of a Commodity VR, provides a unique, entertaining, and educational experience. It is the first of a series introducing contemporary Indigenous realities as companion pieces for art exhibitions – but they function just as well as a standalone experience.
It is our mission to educate the general population while also inspiring the Native youth to carry on the stories, the language, and the ceremonies of our peoples.
Alana Sayers is from the Hupačasath (Nuu-Chah-Nulth) and Alexander (Cree, Treaty 6) First Nations. She grew up on the Hupačasath reserve and went to Haahuuyayak school. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. She is in the process of creating what she calls ‘Nuu-Chah-Nulth literary transformation masks,’ which is the physicalization of her dissertation, that looks at different conceptions and constructions of indigeneity and how this can be seen in literature.
Autumn Schnell is a Gwich’in tr’iinjoo currently residing on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands while studying at the University of British Columbia as a First Nations and Indigenous studies major. Autumn was raised in amiskwacîwâskahikan and recently moved to Vancouver, now working as CiTR’s Indigenous Collective Coordinator.
Chuck Seymour is the Cultural Coordinator at Quw’utusun Syuwen’tst Lelum, Cowichan Tribes’ Cultural Education Department. The Cultural Coordinator is responsible for Hul’q’umi’num’ language, as well as the language resources. He works with his Elders Committee to ensure the accuracy, meaning and full content of materials produced. Language classes are also facilitated for staff and community.
Chuck works with his Cultural Clerk to ensure all archive material is securely stored both physically and electronically. These materials are used in the creation of language resources.
When not working, Chuck can be spotted on a football (soccer) pitch playing Masters football or on the lacrosse floor playing Masters lacrosse, particularly passing the ball around with his sons. His most precious time is spent with his wife and sons exploring life’s adventures.
Mark Turin is an anthropologist, linguist and radio presenter. At the University of British Columbia, Mark serves as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program, Acting Co-Director of the University’s new Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology. His most recent research looks specifically at the use of digital technologies, particularly smart phone apps, in the preservation and renewal of Indigenous languages.
This paper explores the diverse ways in which Indigenous communities are making use of new media to promote, strengthen and connect their languages. In particular, Dr. Turin will focus on the role of smartphone Apps and community radio as used for language mobilization.
There is growing interest in the role of emerging digital technologies to support language reclamation and revitalization, and in web-based tools in particular. While such technologies provide interesting opportunities, they can also amplify the risks that communities already face. Despite the sharp uptake of digital tools to support endangered language learning, there is little in the way of systematic and rigorous evaluation on the results of their use. In order for such technologies to have lasting and positive impacts on language revitalization, communities need to know which tools are proving to be most effective, where, why and how.
Ana Vivaldi is a Simons Research Fellow at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University as well as an Instructor in Departments of Anthropology and Sociology at UBC. She has conducted ethnographic collaborations with Toba indigenous people since the year 2000, both in Northern Argentina and in the urban margins of the city of Buenos Aires. Her work shows the importance of spatial mobility and the creation of spatial and social networks, that she coined “subaltern assemblages” in the making of indigenous territorialities that overflow rural/urban divisions. Her work has benefitted from the support of the International Development Research Centre, the Liu Institute for Global Issues, and UBC Graduate Fellowships. She is currently conducting research on the experience of indigenous men in the Argentinean military. Since 2014, among others, she has taught Ethnographic Methods, Social Theory, Media Anthropology and Sociology of Indigenous People at UBC, where she obtained her Ph.D.
In this paper, I explore how urban Toba Indigenous People living in the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, use mobile phones to reinforce existing social relations and coordinate mobilities of people, objects and news between urban and rural communities. These mobilities help produce livelihoods and navigate the access to state institutions. While mobile phones, unlike other technologies have been smoothly incorporated and very quickly become part of the everyday life the technology has created new forms of disconnection and recreated uncertainty in the relations with state institutions in the city of Buenos Aires. When mobile phones break down, they do not just produce a temporary interruption in communication, but rather effect new forms of deep disconnection that are social and spatial. When phones break down urban Tobas are disconnected from relatives in rural communities, from friends and neighbors across Buenos Aires urban subaltern groups, and they disconnect from institutions and collaborators in the city center in a way that cannot be easily overcome. Information in cellphones, when they break is very hard to recover and to recollect. Phones thus have an ambivalent role. While they enable fluid connections that link urban margins, city centers, and rural areas and thus allow an indigenization of space beyond recognized territories, they create abrupt ruptures in the possibilities of maintaining this rural/urban indigenous territorialities.
Andrea N. Walsh is a visual anthropologist who specializes in 20th-century and contemporary Indigenous l art and visual culture in Canada, as well as theoretical and methodological approaches to visual research. Dr. Walsh is interested in collections of objects and images and how museums and galleries curate and exhibit these pieces of material culture. Her primary purpose for thinking about collections is to consider how institutions, which care for Indigenous objects and images, engage Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and audiences through curatorial and exhibition practice. Her work critically reflects on and addresses discourses and actions of reconciliation and redress regarding relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada. Her focus on these larger issues through art and visual culture flows through art and cultural and educational institutions. The majority of her work as a visual anthropologist and curator is based in community led research initiatives that seek to engage these institutions and their practices.
Jasmin Winter was born in Vancouver and raised by a Chinese mother and European father. She received her undergraduate degree in International Development Studies at McGill University and spent the summer months working in Eeyou Istchee with James Bay Cree communities. Jasmin went on to complete the Master of Development Practice program at the University of Winnipeg, where she focused her research on the potential of digital technologies and new media for cultural revitalization. In 2017, Jasmin had the privilege of working with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures to support the coordination of the third annual Symposium on the Future Imaginary. She is now proudly working with the First Nations Technology Council in BC.
The First Nations Technology Council is an Indigenous-led organization mandated by First Nations leadership in BC to create opportunities for Indigenous peoples to participate and lead in the technology sector. First and foremost, the Technology Council recognizes Indigenous peoples as the original innovators on these territories, and it is with this perspective that this presentation outlines the Technology Council’s two big initiatives that will be launching this year: the Labour Market Project, and Foundations and Futures in Innovation and Technology.
Symposium for Indigenous New Media 